


red

by sunchime



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Pseudo-Incest, my fingers slipped, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:24:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19005748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunchime/pseuds/sunchime
Summary: Five had seen the color red many times. He’d seen it on missions, seen it at the end of the world, seen it in the Commission. Yes, Five had gotten very used to seeing the color.





	1. Chapter 1

Five had spent his whole life learning to hide affection. Ever since he was young, it’d been drilled into him: love is weakness. Showing it will get you killed. 

Some of his siblings have taken it to heart. Case in point, Diego. Emotionally stunted, outwardly aggressive, internally soft. He distanced himself from everyone except for mom--and that was only because she couldn’t be killed.

Yes, Five knew first hand the consequences of showing affection. When he and Vanya had been caught together during her violin practice, Pogo had warned them to either hide it better or stop all together. 

They hadn’t listened.

Five didn’t see Vanya for a full week.

Vanya didn’t know who she was for a full week.

It was a bad week for everyone.

But now, as he sat there on the wet pavement, Five wasn’t afraid to show anything. He screamed, he cried, he pleaded for any god out there to save her. She wasn’t supposed to be here out on the battlefield. She was supposed to have been with dad.

Vanya wouldn’t open her eyes. Her face was pale, colorless and lifeless like the pavement beneath her. Except now the pavement held more color than she did.

Five was drenched in her blood, desperately clutching her body to him, hands clawing at the hole in her back. She shouldn’t have been here. 

He pressed his forehead to hers, desperately praying his own warmth could fill her up again. 

Fuck this. This wasn’t happening. It didn’t make any sense.

Vanya should have been with dad. Dad should have been watching over her. But here she was, cold in his arms.

“Vanya,” his voice broke.

What the fuck.

“Vanya, _please_.”

_Whatever fucking god is out there, please save her. Bring her_ back.

Five didn’t pay any mind to the fighting around him. They could kill him for all he cared. The bastard who had done this to her was already dead. He had torn him to pieces, made his death slow. No one bothered to interfere.

“ _Please_.”

But no matter how much he begged, Vanya never opened her eyes. 

He kissed her forehead, pressing his lips hard onto her skin. “Vanya. Wake up.”

Nothing.

He kissed her nose, softer. Shaky. “Open your eyes, dammit...!”

Cold. She was so cold. 

“Shit!” He was hysterical, he knew. But who the fuck cared. No one paid them any attention. None of there siblings had even bothered to check on her. 

If he hadn’t had that tiny sliver of love for them remaining, he’d have killed them too.

_“You don’t mean that,”_ Vanya whispers in his head.

“I do,” he said against her cheek, clinging desperately to pale skin.

_“You love them too much to hurt them.”_

“So what. I’ll kill them all.”

_“Five.”_

Out of his mind. He was losing it. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He nuzzled into her neck. There was so much blood all he could smell was iron and salt. Not even a hint of her lavender shampoo could fight the stench. 

Five wanted to puke. “Open your eyes and I’ll reconsider.”

_“I can’t. You know I can’t,”_ she sighs. 

“Then I’ll die with you.”

_“That’s bullshit and you know it.”_

Five dug his fingers into her jacket, nearly ripping the material with his strength. “Then what do you propose I do?”

_“Fix this.”_

His teeth hurt with how hard he clenched his jaw. Fix it. Like it was easy. Two impossible time jumps and Five had practically found himself powerless. He was lucky if he could spatial jump once a week.

Burrowing deeper into her neck, Five was practically submerged in her blood. The hot liquid boiled his skin, searing every inch it touched.

_Jesus, what the_ fuck.

“Fucking _wake up!_ ” He hissed into her ear. “I can’t lose you again.” His voice was shattered, like broken chunks of glass were lodged in his throat.

But even her voice was silent in his head.

Five had seen the color red many times. He’d seen it on missions, seen it at the end of the world, seen it in the Commission. Yes, Five had gotten very used to seeing the color.

Now, it was the only color he saw. It stained everything around him. From the white of the pavement to the white of his skin. 

Vanya had never been one to like red all that much. She’d said it reminded her too much of hard times. Understandable. 

Yet here she was, drowning in the color.

It wasn’t right.

This wasn’t right.

Red. Ugly, deep, violent red. 

But Five had already destroyed the fucker who had killed Vanya. There was nowhere else to direct his rage, no one who could wipe this horrible feeling ripping away at his heart.

The fighting around him had turned to white noise, a noiseless buzzing that crawled over his skin. He couldn’t see anything beyond the blood. Was the battle still going on? Were there still more monsters to kill? Five couldn’t tell anymore. Nothing felt real.

His rage scorched the insides of his rib cage, lashing out at him with nothing to sic it on.

His rage had nowhere to go. Nowhere but himself.

_“Fix this,”_ she had said.

Well fine. He’d fucking fix this.

Five sat up, setting her body gently down on the sidewalk. He cupped her cheek, stroking the skin gently with his thumb. He kissed her one last time, over the lips. She tasted like mint. Five nearly let out a sob.

Standing up, he clenched his fists. 

Fuck this world. Fuck this planet. It didn’t give a single fuck that it had lost the one life that had ever really mattered.

His hands were stained with her blood, red and ugly. 

Tears cut deep tracks in his cheeks, carving into the skin with their heat. He let the pain fuel him, let his fury power him.

His fists were red, nails digging into his skin to add even more color. His blood mixed with hers.

Five clenched his jaw, the grinding of his teeth blending with the white noise humming in his ears. The hairs on his arms stuck up, sending a merciless shock throughout his body.

His hands turned blue.


	2. Chapter 2

Five was used to new beginnings being dressed in sheep’s clothing.

His first experiment with time travel had him chasing a high that lead to a proverbial rock bottom. The future ended up being a twisted version of a different kind of Hell he had grown up with. The taste of ash stuck with him years after leaving the apocalypse.

His first ever job offer lead him to becoming an unthinking, unquestioning killer. He learned quickly how to bury all his emotions into the grit of the rock bottom he had reached the first time. 

His first attempt at saving the world ended with an unconscious sister and the rest of humanity. Despite his best efforts, all those emotions he had buried when he was a 50-something-year-old man had come back shooting up from the bedrock like some kind of perverted daisy.

The funny thing about rock bottom: you can always go deeper.

And Five felt it deep inside him that he had blasted clear through the earth’s fucking inner core and right to the opposite side of the crust.

The energy ripping through the space around him made his breath shudder, singed the insides of his lungs, turned the very air around him into a fiery heat. His rib cage ached with every exhale, burned with every inhale.

Every ounce of his determination pierced at the elusive expanse of time. For once in his life, Five said “fuck the numbers.” For once in his life, Five let his emotions control his powers. Vanya was with him in that moment, her spirit encouraging him every step of the way. Her blood was on his hands and he used that as motivation.

Everything was blue. Blue and electric and sharp. A terrifying kind of beauty. He’d never seen his powers so vividly before.

In the back of his mind he knew it was Vanya who made it this ethereal kind of sublime.

His hands contorted into claws, slashing at the air like it was nothing, nails catching onto seconds, minutes, hours, days…He tore at time mercilessly, destroying it for all the wrongs it had committed against him, shattering all its delicate intricacies and careful plans as retribution.

Five had always considered time as a mystery to chase, a puzzle to figure out. Time had never been kind to him; he had never expected it to be. He _had_ , at least, pondered it fondly, considered them to have a civil acquaintanceship. But it had so thoroughly fucked him over so many times he saw no reason to play nice with it anymore. If time wanted to toy with him, Five would make time his bitch. Would make it beg and plead for him to never touch it again.

And so he wrenched at its center, tore its core into smithereens, obliterating any resistance until Five stood victorious on the other side of the battlefield, war-torn and battered.

The library had always been Vanya’s favorite place to hide away in in this prison they called a home. Its tall windows always let in a golden lighting she thought of as a tiny slice of heaven. She’d told him once that when he and their siblings trained in the first timeline, she’d settle herself in this room for ours, escaping into worlds with happier endings.

Now, the library looked exactly like that mental image Vanya was always so good at painting with just her words. The windows were opened, letting in a breeze to relieve the intensity of the summer heat. Rich shades of yellows and golds cascaded into the room, coating it in glowing rays. Outside, the birds chirped like they hadn’t a care in the world.

The stark contrast nearly killed him. The drumming of his heart and the frantic rhythm of his breathing were out of place in the picturesque image. His whole body was drenched in her blood, tiny beads of red falling onto the sunny floor and staining it. These things belonged in the bloodstained moment where his whole world crumbled into dust and he watched his reason to live bleed out before his very eyes.

He wanted to laugh and scream and cry all at once as a rush of emotions smashed into him like a battering ram. Vanya died and he returned to the one place that brought her peace.

_A tiny slice of heaven._

Five wanted to rip his hair out the way his heart had been robbed from his chest. He couldn’t handle this. The grief ate away at him. In his head, he kept picturing her corpse laying on the ground before him, turning the amber of the wood into an ugly black.

Bile rose to his throat. Smoke entered his lungs. Pavement dug at his knees.  He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t—

A flash of movement caught his eye. Tucked in the corner at the end of a bookcase, a person flipped through a book.

His heart stopped.

Vanya.

_Vanya._

_“Vanya!”_

She turned to him, her book tumbling to the floor as he slammed into her, arms winding tightly around her middle. His hands gripped onto her for dear life, ear smashed onto her chest, listening for the heartbeat that had been so insufferably silent in the hollow of her ribs only a moment before. A moment that had lasted longer than any apocalypse he had had to endure before.

“Five, what’s the matter?” Her voice was so soft, so _sweet_. Sweeter than any voice his mind could ever conjure.

He knew he looked a mess. The front of his uniform was saturated with her blood, his hands still slippery with the substance. Five was sure he smelled like some bastardized version of a cologne with notes of iron, sweat, and vomit. If he looked in a mirror, his eyes would be tired and raw, his face stained with tears and _red_. So much red. He’d look like he had just escaped a rainstorm from purgatory…but he just couldn’t bring himself to give a rat’s ass. 

She was _here._

With _him.  
_

_Alive.  
_

He hugged her tighter to him, sure he was crushing her a little too tightly. It didn’t matter, he’d never let her go again.

“What day is it?” He begged into her vest.

“July 6th.”

Five crashed his mouth against hers, desperate and deliriously happy. Her lips were so warm, like the sun rays that filtered through her bedroom window every morning. Warm like the perfect cup of coffee only she knew how to brew. Warm like the timbre of her laugh.

Much too soon for any semblance of comfort to take root, Vanya pulled away. He needed her closer, pressed against him so he could feel her whole body thrumming beneath his, whole and _alive_. So he clung to her waist, not letting her get too far.

Her breathing was heavy, puffs of air fanned across his face as he watched her standing there before him. Animated. Moving. Alive.

God, she was _alive!_

A sob nearly escaped, his throat clenching shut at the effort to restrain it. Tears pricked at his eyes.

He’d never take her for granted again. Every moment he decided would be spent worshiping her, appreciating her, _loving_ her.

“What’s this all about?” Vanya finally asked him when her breath evened out. She looked up at him, eyes questioning until they registered what she was seeing. “Is that _blood?!_ ”

“I love you,” he blurted.

Vanya gaped at him, her beautiful eyes round and doelike.

“Don’t you ever fucking die on me.” Without thinking, his hands jumped to her arms, fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises. He didn’t mean to hurt her, but this message was important. “Do you hear me?” Five shook her a little.

He couldn’t stand losing her again. Never again.

“Five, what—”

“You _can’t._ ” His voice broke on the last word.

It was like the weight of the world came crashing down on him, he couldn’t keep his head up anymore. Five sought out her warmth again, a fierce kind of intensity taking over him. He buried his head into the crook of her neck, nose nuzzling her collarbone.

There was a stretch of silence—a silence that nearly sent him spiraling again—before Vanya placed a hesitant hand over his hair, stroking it with a kind of caution shown only to feral animals. In a sense, Five guessed he was a little feral.

“Okay, okay,” she whispered. “I get it,” she ran her fingers through his hair, soothing his sporadic breathing. Her palms were warm against his scalp, easing away the icy cold that had seized his body when his world had ended all over again.

She hummed quietly into his ear. So calming. God she was so calming. He could feel the way her chest rose with her breathing, the gentle beat of her heart, the sound of her voice caressing his ears. _Her_ voice and her’s alone.

“I won’t die, Five,” Vanya reassures him. “Not without you.”

At that, Five knew he could finally let himself breathe. Rock bottom had hit him hard time and time again, but somehow he had made it to the other side of the earth. Somehow, he knew he could only go up from here. And if anyone tried to stop him? He’d kill them dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys asked for a chapter 2, so there's your happy ending!!! ( ´з｀)ﾉ⌒～'⋆*.♡*⋆ฺ*.

**Author's Note:**

> i barely read this over so sorry in advance if this makes no sense lmao
> 
> there are definitely some threads i could have woven in better, some pieces that don't really fit but this is just a quicky so here. look my garbage in the eyes kasjdlkasjhd


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